6/5/18 10:05 a.m. EST: This story was updated to include comments from Ohio Board of Pharmacy Patient and Caregiver Liaison Grant Miller.
The State of Ohio Board of Pharmacy issued 56 retail licenses to medical cannabis businesses on June 4. See a full list of license winners below.
The winners were whittled from a list of 376 applicants statewide, all divided into regional districts—Northwest, Northeast, Southwest and Southeast. Each region was then divided into 31 districts—usually comprised of three or four counties—that mapped out where dispensaries would be located throughout the state.
“That was the first consideration when it came to allocation because … we have to abide by those restrictions,” said Grant Miller, the Board’s patient and caregiver liaison. “For example, there could have been someone who had a better score in a certain district than someone in another district, but if the person with the higher score didn’t have a high enough score to [beat other applicants in his or her district and] get a license in that district, then they didn’t get a license.”
Similarly, three separate companies applied for a dispensary license at the same address in Lorain, with only the top scoring applicant securing the license.
Business entities that were awarded an Ohio retail license include:
• GTI Ohio
• NMG Ohio
• AFS Cultivation
• Greenleaf Apothecaries
• Cannamed Therapeutics
• 127 OH LLC
• KDJOH LLC
• FarmaceuticalRx
• Mother Knows Best
• Green Leaf Medical of Ohio
• Quest Wellness Ohio
• Glass City Alternatives
• Eagle Dispensaries
• Verdant Creations
• OPC Retail
• The Forest Sandusky
• Buckeye Botanicals
• Harvest of Ohio
• Ohio Grown Therapies
• WGB LLC
• Cann Ascend Alternative
• BCCO LLC
• Ohio Cannabis Clinic
• Cresco Labs Ohio
• Ohio Valley Natural Relief
• Care Med Associates
• Green Rx
• PharmaCann Ohio
• Pure Ohio Wellness
• Schottenstein Aphria
• Therapeutic Healing Care
• Debbie's Dispensary Ohio
(Note that these are registered corporate names, not necessarily commercial names of the dispensaries. Several of these businesses were awarded multiple licenses.)
The Board will be contacting license winners in the coming days to make sure they have all the information they need about what is expected of them, Miller said.
The state could issue up to 60 retail licenses, but two districts did not have any applicants and another district had only a few, none of which were viable, he added.
Every two years, the Board will assess patient access and patient demand in the state and determine whether it needs to issue a new request for applications for the regions that were missed or to add new dispensaries to the program overall to go above the maximum of 60 retail locations. “That’s something we are able to look at, as the program’s designed for us to grow with what we see the demands are in the state,” Miller said.
Provisional licensees have a maximum of six months to demonstrate compliance with the Board of Pharmacy before they will be awarded a certificate of operation, Miller said. The Board’s medical marijuana compliance agent will conduct an inspection and ultimately determine whether the business has met all the requirements to receive that final certificate, he added.
Several applicants were disqualified from receiving provisional licenses for various reasons, Miller said, including companies listing individuals on the application who plead guilty or were convicted of a disqualifying offense according to the Board of Pharmacy’s rules. In addition, the jurisdiction where some companies planned to locate their dispensary had a moratorium on medical marijuana-related businesses, or the business might have been located within 500 feet of a prohibited location as defined in the regulations.
The state's medical marijuana program is set to begin sales Sept. 8, though a patient advocate sitting on the state board recently told the Columbus Dispatch, "I don’t think there is a lot of confidence in that Sept. 8 date."
The Medical Marijuana Control Program Advisory Committee will meet Thursday, June 7, to discuss the timeline, Miller said, adding that he is confident that some of the dispensaries will be up and running by the Sept. 8 deadline. “We’ve got a lot of people who believe this can help them, and that’s what we’re going to try to do,” he said.
Ohio Medical Marijuana: Provisional Dispensary License Allocation by sandydocs on Scribd
